Alumni recognize Dear Old Professor

Dear Old Professor

Engineering alumni have honored longtime professor Mike Meadows with a scholarship
endowment in his name.

Dear Old Professor.

It sounds like a moniker from a 19th-century coming-of-age novel set at some elite
college in the Northeast, not the nickname bestowed on a fast-talking civil engineering professor from west Tennessee.

But that is what University of South Carolina professor Mike Meadows' students have called him for more than a decade. A nickname he has taken as his
own and abbreviated (he is an engineer, after all) as "DOP."

"Who is DOP?" is a PowerPoint presentation he created to introduce students to his
nickname and gives them free rein to use it, regardless of what they think the "D"
should represent.

But Meadows also includes his "5 House Rules" in that presentation, including: Be honest, speak your mind and don't be offended
when others do the same. Be professional. That last one is key as Meadows teaches
the civil engineering capstone course for the College of Engineering and Computing.
That course brings together everything the students have learned throughout their
college careers and makes them put it to use on a real-world project.

Although the student projects don't actually get built, the students' work is sometimes
used by real-world engineers who do build the projects.

It is this course and his worry about who will teach it after he is gone that keeps
Meadows at work even after 33 years at the university.

That dedication is what brought out dozens of former students and co-workers to honor
Meadows recently with the establishment of the Mike Meadows Civil Engineering Endowment Fund. The fund, supported by former students and colleagues, will provide undergraduate
scholarships for students majoring in civil engineering at Carolina.

The idea was hatched by Karen Ammarell, student services administrator in civil and environmental engineering, who enlisted
her husband, Ray Ammarell, '88 and '89 civil engineering, and the department chair, Robert Mullen.

Karen Ammarell got the idea after seeing Meadows' pocket watch, inscribed with the
initials DOP, that was given to him by former student Jennifer Wolters Mancine, '10 civil engineering. "I realized just how special he is to our students," Ammarell
said. "I began thinking that a traditional thank-you plaque would not be sufficient."

"He was always just very accessible and willing to talk to you," says Ray Ammarell,
one of Meadows' former students and now an engineer with South Carolina Electric &
Gas. "He would get something out of you, though. He would say, 'Do me a favor,' and
ask you to take something somewhere across campus then say, 'We'll talk when you get
back.' "

Engineering professor Charles Pierce, who also is helping raise money for the endowment, says alumni occasionally honor
former professors by establishing a scholarship in their names. But, Pierce says,
he has never seen it done when the professor is still working.

"What is unique about Mike is the amount of time and effort that he is willing to
commit to his students," Pierce says. "It is unusual in a good way. He is the definition
of a mentor for students."

Show your support

If you would like to contribute to the Mike Meadows Civil Engineering Endowment Fund,
contact Jeff Verver, 803-777-3612.